Words and Dreams
by Sweet Avidya Jones
Summary: Hey folks, people on tumblr seemed to like this little Kataang ficlet so I thought I'd toss it up here, too.


Aang dreamt of the Air Nomads often.

They were nightmares in the early days, tortured speculation about deaths he had not witnessed. As a firebender himself, he could fill in the missing information with excruciating detail. Later, they gave way to gentler experiences, memories of sitting in the shrine room of the Southern Air Temple, surrounded by the soft eddy of voices. The current of the chanting carried his awareness. He wondered, when he woke, how many people were left who could even comprehend those words. Historians, maybe, and bookish linguists. These people must exist but Aang had not encountered them.

Bumi still remembered a few words and would insert them casually into their conversations, just like in the old days. His accent was even worse now than when they were boys but Aang appreciated the gesture. Guru Pathik was the only other person he knew of who spoke the Air Nomad tongue with any degree of fluency.

Aang was teaching the Air Acolytes but it was spiritually utilitarian. They were learning chants and hopefully at some point they would appreciate the full meaning of what they were saying. For now the form was enough, the discipline and effort were enough. He was glad of it, touched by how earnest and excited they were.

By virtue of their nomadic existence, most of his people had been multilingual. The monks pushed this aspect of Aang's education particularly because of his status as the Avatar. It was helpful. It was a good way to connect with people, more personal than using the more widespread language all four Nations had in common. It also had unintended consequences, namely that it was harder for people to hide things from him.

He'd been at a conference once in Ba Sing Se and caught two Fire Nation magistrates in an unflattering side conversation about Zuko. They were sitting directly across from Aang, not bothering to lower their voices. At last his patience wore through and when he spoke it was in the dialect common in the Fire Nation capital, the parlance of diplomats. "Do you think I can't understand you?" he snapped at them. His word choices and tone often came across as formal and old fashioned - he had learned these things over one hundred years ago, after all - but in this case it worked out well and both men froze in surprise. Neither said anything further in his presence the rest of the day.

He worried he would forget the words of his own people, that time would wear them out of his brain like a stone eroding in the ocean. He wrote when he had time, but it made him feel lonely, filling countless scrolls with words and translations and pronunciations. It was better than nothing.

xXXx

Aang dreamt of his past lives sometimes.

They were usually snatches of events, brief but enough for him to intuit what was happening. He was Roku, riding on Fang's back through smoke. He was Kyoshi, digging in a garden, dirt beneath her nails. It was hard to know what to make of all this, of these tiny invasions of his unconscious mind. The duality of these experiences was disorienting. Sometimes he would wake up and for a split second, he would be confused about who and where he was. This was especially true for the unusual occasions when the dreams were more intimate.

The first time it happened was during the war, in the days when he was still hiding his arrows. They'd had a rare day of quiet, camped on a beach. He and Katara sparred in the shallows of the ocean. She was particularly fierce and challenging that day, which he usually liked, but something about it made him uncomfortable and he wasn't sure what. Her movements were subtle and he always had to pay close attention to anticipate what she would do next. There was a minute shift to her hips he'd recently identified, when she was about to wind up and pull back her arms to attack. He was watching for it, then realized he was watching for it. Feeling agitated, he ended the session somewhat abruptly. Katara knew something was amiss but didn't press him for answers. Meditating before dinner helped ease his disquiet, but no insight came to him to identify the source.

The dream that night was vague and fuzzy, more a series of sensations, though there were flashes of images. His hands were large and powerful. There was a mouth on his bare shoulder, a moan in his ear. He'd woken up confused, his breathing ragged, and when Sokka asked him if he was all right, he was embarrassed without understanding why.

As he grew older and hormones shaped the focus of his needs, the dreams took on more substance. Once he dreamt he was Kuruk. Aang and Katara had been together for nearly two years but their relationship was still relatively innocent. The stolen moments of privacy between them were fleeting and shy, heady with newness. Kuruk's wife bore enough of a passing resemblance to Katara that Aang felt guilty, like he'd done it on purpose. He didn't think Katara would see it that way. Probably she would accept it just as she accepted every other oddity about him. Even so, he kept it to himself.

It was strange. Strange to wake up aching for someone he'd never met. Aang was used to longing, to missing people he knew he would never see again. This was different, a desire that felt well worn and familiar. The details of the dreams faded as he went about his day, but the feelings lingered, like hunger gnawing at him.

Eventually it passed, once he and Katara gave themselves to each other. The mundane moments remained with him. Yangchen lighting a stick of incense, Kuruk pulling a fish from the water. They felt real to him.

Dreaming of the Air Nomads made him feel isolated. Dreaming of his past lives was reassuring. It reminded him of the circular nature of things. He would have children. He would teach them and hopefully it would be enough. Everything would come around again, eventually, he knew. It would take time.

xXXx

They still weren't quite able to carry on a full conversation in his native tongue, but it was enough for him that she was trying. Some phrases Katara knew well, like "I love you" and "I want you". She moaned the latter to him sometimes and it never failed to completely undo him.

When she was laying beneath him and her back arched off of the bed, he would tell her, "I love seeing you like this," even though she couldn't fully understand. He told her she was beautiful, that he loved being inside her. Sometimes she let these utterances pass, dissolving like snowflakes falling on her skin. Other times she would stop him, lock her legs around him to still the movement of his hips. "Tell me what you're saying," she would murmur in his ear. They would lay together, wrapped up in each other while he translated for her. When he knew the right words in the Southern Water Tribe dialect he gave them to her that way, instead. There was a particular laugh that came out of her when he did this, shy and quiet. It made her blush and she could never quite explain why.

One day he would be gone, a memory as intangible as the rest of his people. He would be a ghost in dream. He needed someone else to hear an Air Nomad voice this way, not from phantoms, or from Acolytes in nearly vacant temples. He needed the words of his people to be more than ritual.

"I love you," he would whisper, like a prayer against her skin. "I love you."


End file.
